In-Person Lecture: How a Grolierite Shaped the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Join Grolier Club and Thomas J. Watson Library friends as Dr. Jonathan Conlin gives a talk called "'An Archaic American'? How a Grolierite Helped Make the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Former Grolier Club librarian Henry Watson Kent (1866-1948) was an important figure behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art's evolution into one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions. Dr. Jonathan Conlin, author of the newly-published book The Met: A History of a Museum and Its People (Columbia U. Press), will explore how Kent's "Yankee" pedigree and previous experience at the Slater Memorial Museum (Norwich, CT) shaped his Met career between 1905-1940, particularly his role in creating the museum's American Wing and Education Department. As John Cotton Dana of Newark Museum and Kent's Met colleagues recognized, he was an innovator, but also "an archaic American" who occasionally appeared hidebound by tradition and deference to his trustees. (Kent is known as well for inventing the Grolier Club's idiosyncratic library cataloging system.)

Jonathan Conlin is Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton. Born in New York, he studied History and Modern Languages at Oxford, before moving to the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Cambridge for his Masters and PhD. In 2006 he published the first history of the National Gallery (London), which he recently re-wrote as the Gallery's official bicentenary history. In 2019 he published an award-winning biography of the art collector, oil magnate and philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian, Mr Five Per Cent (Profile). His book The Met will be available for sale and signing at the lecture.

Note: This is an in-person event. If you wish to register instead for the live webcast, .

Grolier Club Members

If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.

Public Support

We appreciate your interest in the Grolier Club’s programming on the art and history of the book. For more than 130 years we have offered our exhibitions and lectures to the public, free of charge. If you have enjoyed these offerings, and would like to support that tradition, and help ensure that it continues, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Grolier Club.

Accessibility

An ADA-compliant lift from street level to the lobby is available to anyone with mobility issues. All desk staff should be ready and able to assist you in operating the lift, with or without advance notice.

A “T-Coil” assisted listening system is available to anyone attending a lecture in the Exhibition Hall. Visitors with hearing aids should turn their devices to the “T” setting in order to access the system; visitors without hearing aids may request a “loop receiver” with earphones.

Environment

The temperature and humidity in the exhibition hall are tightly controlled for the sake of the valuable items on display, and this may cause the room to feel chilly, particularly in warmer weather, to those coming in from outside. Members and visitors are advised to bring a light wrap when visiting an exhibition, or attending an event in the hall.

Host or Publisher The Grolier Club